MEDAS digitizes paper-heavy workflows for improved efficiency and greener business
Customer Success Stories
Make business totally trackable, faster and more accurate and secure - while simplifying compliance with a large evolving regulation set
Industry
Utilities (electricity distribution)
Challenge
Make business totally trackable, faster and more accurate and secure - while simplifying compliance with a large evolving regulation set
Solution
Iron Mountain Insight platform supports automated digital workflows and makes information more usable with one central view of documentation
Value
- 217 workflows automated
- 100,000+ documents digitized
- Faster response to customers and regulators
- 90% end user satisfaction rate
- 21 live R&D projects supported
- Near 70 metric tons CO2 saving
- 4,934 kg of waste eliminated
Powering the economy
One of the country’s largest electricity distributors, Meram Elektrik Dagıtım A.S. (MEDAS) powers the Turkish economy—providing some twelve-billion-kilowatt hours of energy annually to more than two million businesses and homes across 69 locations in Turkey.
Key to success is staying at the forefront of innovation. For example, by integrating SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), GIS (Geographic Information System), and AMR (automatic meter reading) technologies. In turn, improving remote monitoring and proactive management of possible network faults, along with online customer requests and billing updates.
Overcoming paper-based holdups
The same spirit of technological innovation extends to designing smarter, greener work practices, while continuing to ensure the company fully satisfies its regulatory requirements.
MEDAS is legally obliged to send bills and notices to millions of clients each month, along with documentation that must be submitted to government authorities. All of which used to result in massive amounts of paper and timeconsuming compliance audits.
In addition, the company must respond to customer complaints within a strict timeframe. However, without an effective document processing system, keeping track of paperwork passing internally between departments and communicating findings from investigations was labor-intensive and costly to manage.
Another challenge MEDAS faced in transforming paper-based workflows and automating manual processes was the sheer variety of such documentation.
Safe, healthy electrical distribution operations are central to the country’s economic success. However, the paperwork required to meet consumer and government regulatory requirements made improvements in workflow efficiency almost impossible.
Instantly retrievable digital records
After reviewing various document management systems, the company chose Iron Mountain InSight™. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), this subscription-based solution combines scanning of physical documents with digital storage in a highly secure cloud repository.
Importantly, the platform’s advanced document processing and workflow automation capabilities allow MEDAS employees to find the information they need, in a fraction of the time compared to previous paper files.
“We began by rolling out Iron Mountain InSight to our most paper-heavy departments like Customer Relations, Human Resources, and Finance,” said Halim Salgali, Document Manager and Senior Specialist at MEDAS. “Months of hard work paid off when we became the first Turkish electricity company to digitize service permit application workflows. We also automated our invoice cancellation process.”
More possibilities with less effort
The company currently has over seven hundred active, happy InSight users, 90% of whom rate their experience as satisfied or very satisfied. With twenty-one live R&D projects, the solution’s made life easier for the company’s software developers too.
“Today, vendors try to sell us low-code development platforms—Iron Mountain was doing that ten years ago,” added Oruc. “We wish all the other software packages we use were like InSight. We love the intuitive drag-anddrop interface. And the way it offers a seamless pathway for customizing streamlined workflows as our business needs change, with full autonomy and minimal training.”
One central view of digital records
MEDAS has achieved its original objectives to make business totally trackable, faster, and more accurate and secure, while maintaining compliance with a large evolving set of regulations.
“Iron Mountain InSight has completely changed how our employees work across a wide range of departments and job roles,” said Salgali.
To date, 217 workflows have been automated, 180 of which remain active. More than 100,000 documents have been digitized, including Financial, Legal and HR records, which are integrated into the InSight platform, transforming efficiency and customer experience.
For example, by removing bottlenecks and delays. And enabling employees to effortlessly generate notices and forms, speed-up online internal approvals, and automatically send documents to customers and governmental bodies. As a result, customer complaints regarding utility bills or service-related issues have decreased dramatically.
Clear environmental benefits
Becoming a digital workflow-oriented company with Iron Mountain paperless solutions has also yielded cost savings, while significantly contributing to the company’s sustainability goals and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
About 250 trees are estimated to have been saved by MEDAS so far. Other benefits include a CO2 saving of almost seventy metric tons and 4,934 kg of prevented waste annually. For a utility business once built on paper-based communications and filing systems, these results are especially significant.
“Now, unlike before, when our teams receive requests from regulatory bodies, they are able to instantly pinpoint the required information and respond without delay,” concluded Oruc.
We had the usual mix of physical and digital information with over 9,000 types of documents and many diverse systems. What we actually needed was one central solution to track and manage everything.
